Nature - autonomous learning

after nature 233the most vocal exponent of this process perspective, notably in his bookJustice, Nature and the Geography of Difference (1996).This perspective takes issuewith the Cartesian, Newtonian and neo-Kantian worldviews that, inHarvey’s view, dominate Western thought.These worldviews imagine thehuman and non-human worlds to be composed of discrete physical thingswhich can be analysed prior to, and separate from any contingentrelationships they may have with other things.This atomistic perspective (seeBox 4.3) sees the relations between human and non-human phenomenaas external ones that play no necessary role in constituting those phenomena.Against this, Harvey adopts what I earlier called an internal relationsperspective, following the Marxist philosopher Bertell Ollman (1993) andthe Marxist biologists Levins and Lewontin (1985). In this perspective, whatmakes a given thing different from and apparently unrelated to other thingsis, in fact, its relations with those things.These relations are, as it were, partof or contained within the phenomena that are related to one another inany given case.This links directly to the notion of process mentioned above. Processinvolves change in one or other direction. It involves linking diversephenomena in order that certain goals or ends are achieved, whether byaccident or design.As a Marxist, the key process that Harvey uses to illustratehis internal relations perspective is capitalism.This may sound strange atfirst hearing. After all, capitalism is an economic system. So why describeit as a process? A second look at the diagrammatic representation ofcapitalism in the section in Chapter 3 called ‘Re-making nature’ providesan answer.We see there that capitalism is about the circulation of commodities(e.g. goods and money) and the expansion of wealth (in the form of profit).For Harvey, then, it is this overarching compulsion to ‘accumulate foraccumulation’s sake’ that links all manner of human and non-humanphenomena in intimate ways. From factory-farmed chicken to globalwarming, Harvey argues that people (e.g. as wage workers) and nonhumansbecome the ‘arteries’ through which an invisible process ofceaseless value expansion flows. Because this process is seamless, Harveyargues, we should not make the mistake of fixating on the different thingsthat become embroiled in it.While these differences matter, they do so onlyin relation to the abstract process that conjoins them.Overall, Harvey thus regards particular human and non-human things asthe expressions of general processes. He terms these things ‘moments’ thatgive physical form to the general processes involved. Note that this differs